Cannes Updates: ‘On the Road,’ ‘Rust and Bone’

Cannes Updates: 'On the Road,' 'Rust and Bone'

Let's get one thing out of the way: that leaked Cannes Line-Up was an April Fool's prank, no more, a French blog has admitted. The official selection is still in the head of Festival de Cannes general delegate Thierry Fremaux, who told AFP on Tuesday: "It was an April Fool's stunt played by a couple of jokers."

While we will have to wait until Fremaux announces the Selection Officielle on April 19, of a few things we are sure. One, the Fest opens May 16 with Wes Anderson's "Moonrise Kingdom" and closes on May 27. Two, we will see Walter Salles' "On the Road" there, which has been screening for North American buyers and has not yet landed an offer it can accept. It's one of those cases where the financeers want more for the film than distributors are willing to pay upfront without seeing how audiences and critics respond. Word is the film is two and a half hours long and episodic, which makes sense given that it is an adaptation of the peripatetic 1957 Jack Kerouac classic. The film stars Kristen Stewart, Viggo Mortensen, Garrett Hedlund, Sam Riley and Amy Adams. (New character posters are below.)

Three, we will also see Jacques Audiard's "Rust and Bone," which stars Marion Cotillard ("La Vie en Rose," "Inception," "Midnight in Paris") as a whale trainer opposite the breakout actor from "Bullhead," Matthias Schoenaerts. Audiard is rushing to finish the film, which he and Thomas Bidegain adapted from a book of short stories by Craig Davidson. Sony Pictures Classics nabbed the romantic mystery ahead of the fest; SPC also released Audiard's Oscar-nominated "A Prophet."

And four, while SPC has taken Woody Allen films to Cannes in the past ("Midnight in Paris" opened last year's fest), the filmmaker is opening "To Rome with Love" in Italy in April. No Croisette for Allen this year.

Comments

Cannes is about world premieres or at least rare European premieres if a film has already shown at a festival like Sundance. It’s an exception if a movie has already opened in a European country. In any case I hear Woody isn’t going.